This morning at 3:01 a.m. ET (12:01 a.m. PT) eager customers had the opportunity to get their iPhone 5 pre-orders in before the masses – or so they thought. Not only did the massive amount of people create a sort of online traffic jam, it turns out demand for Apple's latest handset was so huge that pre-order units have already sold out.

While the initial pre-order batch may already be long gone, anyone who still wants to pre-order the new handset still can. However, it looks like those orders will be shipping out a week later than the phones early birds struggled to get their virtual mitts on this morning.

Though we wouldn't expect anything less from the Apple fanatics of the world, the sell-out still comes as a bit of a surprise. Last year, when Apple started accepting pre-orders for the iPhone 4S, it took 22 hours to run through the initial stock, this year it only took 1 hour.

That said, if you absolutely must have an iPhone 5 on launch day, Sept. 21st, you'll want to head to a brick-and-mortar Apple Store. Even then, you'll need to get there early – we have a sneaking suspicion those lines are going to be a little long and once the phones are gone, they're gone. Until the next shipment arrives, that is.